Alex needed looking after more than ever. Vicky’s murder had taken a terrible toll.
An hour later, they were all on Nantucket Island, aboard Blackhawke. Because of the yacht’s enormous size, she was anchored outside the entrance to Nantucket Harbor. The harbor could not safely accommodate her gleaming black, two hundred forty foot–long hull. Unwittingly, Hawke had provided the island with a new tourist attraction. Every few hours, the Steamship Authority’s large ferries would arrive from Hyannis and Wood’s Hole, loaded to the gunwales with day-trippers. Everyone crowded the upper deck, staring in wonder at the huge yacht now anchored just opposite the harbor mouth.
She was bigger than most ferries.
Having stowed their gear in their respective staterooms, showered and changed, the four friends had all reconvened in the ship’s paneled library. By the time they assembled, Congreve had already turned Blackhawke’s beautiful library into a veritable War Room.
Ambrose had erected four large wooden easels, two on either side of the fireplace. Each easel held a large pad of blank white paper. Three were blank anyway. Ambrose was now standing before the fourth creating a handwritten list of every one of Hawke’s known enemies with a fat black Magic Marker. It was a long list, Alex saw, dismayed but not surprised, as Congreve kept adding names. At this rate he was going to fill up all four pads.
“I say, Constable,” Alex said, “Your little list there is certainly warming the cockles of my heart. When you’ve completed this impressive catalogue of ‘Fiends and Villains Who Want Hawke Dead,’ perhaps we could do one consisting of ‘Friends & Acquaintances Who Find Him Rather Chummy.’ Just for fun, right, Sniper?”
“Damnifiknow! Hellificare!” the parrot Sniper squawked, somewhat in agreement.
Hawke had cared for the large Black Hyacinth macaw now perched on his shoulder since childhood. Brazilian macaws can live to the ripe old age of 110 years, but Sniper was a vibrant 75. Her plumage, despite her “black” appellation, was still a glossy ultramarine blue. An old Hawke family tradition, allegedly begun by his notorious ancestor, the pirate Blackhawke himself, was to use trained parrots as protection. Any unseen threat, and Sniper would instantly squawk out a warning. She also had a salty vocabulary, courtesy of Hawke’s grandfather.
“Friends? Delighted to,” Congreve said, scribbling away furiously, his back still turned towards them. “That certainly shouldn’t take long,” he added, earning a chuckle from Stokely and Sutherland.
Alex smiled. It was amazing how many enemies one could acquire during one brief decade in the service of two rather obvious notions like freedom and democracy.
There were individuals, corporations, and even a section of entire nations on Congreve’s burgeoning Enemies Register. Some, Alex found hardly surprising. Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and Kashmir. Okay. But, Canada? Liechtenstein? Sweden? He’d have to ask Congreve about that lot later. At any rate, the idea was to vet out every name on the list and eliminate as many as possible. Those who remained would comprise a new list.
Suspects.
“Very comprehensive list, Constable,” Hawke said. “My compliments to the author.”
“Thank you, but that would be you, dear boy.”
“May I add one?” asked Hawke.
“Certainly.”
“Cuba.”
“Hmm. Cuba.”
“Yes. I left a lot of ruffled feathers down there on my most recent visit. A bloodless coup d’etat that turned a bit bloody.”
“Anybody who was anybody in that rebel army was dead by the time we left,” Stokely said. “Still, we might have missed a couple.”
“Indeed, Alex,” Congreve said, adding the name Cuba. “Stupid of me not to think of it.”
“Not at all,” Hawke said. “Stoke’s right. We killed most of the terrorist bastards when we took out that bloody rat’s nest at Telarana. Still, a precious few could have escaped. Chaps hoping I’ve celebrated my last birthday.”
“Motive?” Congreve said, asking his favorite question.
“We can safely rule out love or lucre,” Hawke said. “That leaves loathing and, of course, lust.”
“Yeah. Maybe somebody down there had himself a little crush on Vicky?” Stoke asked, and a silence fell over the room. “You know, when the rebels held her captive?”
“A crime of passion?” Sutherland asked. “A spurned lover?”
“Well,” Ambrose said after a few more long moments, “I can see by the expressions on your faces you’ve all had enough excitement for one evening, gentlemen.” He capped the marker. “We shall attack the thing with vigor on the morrow.”
“Yes, Constable,” Hawke said, rising from his leather armchair. “This little exercise has been most uplifting. At any moment I may burst into song. Do you never tire of all this bloody spadework, Ambrose, beavering away morning, noon, and night?”
“On the contrary,” Congreve said. “You remember, to be sure, what Holmes said to Watson in the very first chapter of The Sign of Four?”
“Sorry,” Hawke replied, “Seems to have slipped my mind at the moment. Mind you, keen, alert, and up on my toes as I am, I’ve not yet got round to memorizing the complete works of Conan Doyle.”
He was rewarded with a wan smile from Congreve.
“ ‘The pleasure of finding a field for my peculiar powers is my highest reward,’ ” Congreve said, relighting his pipe for the umpteenth time, a rather self-satisfied little smile on his lips.
“Ah,” Alex said smiling. “My highest reward at this moment would be a medium rare center-cut filet mignon and a single glass of good Napa Valley claret.”
“Excellent idea,” Ambrose said, expelling a puff of blue-grey smoke. “I do hope no one minds. Since we’ll be steaming out of this lovely harbor soon, I’ve booked reservations ashore at a delightful restaurant I discovered during my wanderings about town. Dinner will be at seven sharp. Shall we all tidy up a bit and meet up on deck at the stern? Fantail Lounge at six? Quick cocktail and then a ten- or fifteen-minute stroll to the restaurant. Jackets and ties would be appropriate, I should think.”
Alex had to smile. He loved it when Ambrose took charge of things. He so delighted in doing it and it was amusing to watch the world-famous detective in the role of the mother hen, shepherding the little brood about, clucking about this and that.
Hawke found Nantucket town itself to be completely charming. Sitting under the stars on Blackhawke’s uppermost deck during the drinks hour, he had been delighted with the harbor and the picturesque town beyond, especially the many white church spires rising into the deepening indigo of the evening sky.
He imagined all those late eighteenth-century churches filled to bursting every Sunday morning; women and children praying for the great whale fleets to return safely, bearing husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers back from perilous voyages to the South Pacific. Voyages sometimes lasted four or even five years.
Lovely eighteenth- and nineteenth-century architecture lined every street and Alex was pleased to see that, somehow, the island fathers had managed to keep the horrors of modern architecture completely at bay. Real candles were burning in the windows of many houses and you could sense lush rose gardens blooming behind the picket fences and sharply tailored hedgerows. Some streets in the town were gaslit and paved with heavy cobblestones. Stones, Congreve told him, that had once been the ballast in the holds of the first ships bringing settlers across the Atlantic.
“I rather like this island, Ambrose,” Hawke remarked, turning up the collar of his yellow slicker as they headed towards the center of town. “Although I seem to like all islands. Something to do with being born on one, I suppose.”
A fine spring rain was falling. The brick-paved street glistened with soft yellow light from many windows; hazily lit doorways peeked out here and there from behind thick bowers of white roses. Alex and Ambrose had fallen behind their companions, having lingered to admire en route the forthright simplicity of a particular house or a garden trellis.
